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Originally Posted by Mr November
I was almost ready to say that slavery based on race was unique to the US but then I stopped myself because while it's the greatest contemporary example of race based slavery, its not the only place that used black slaves - and throughout history any kind of differences between people has been "useful" in distinguishing which groups might be used as slaves - race normally being an obvious one. But in the US racism and slavery are especially well tied together.
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Do you have another historical example of slavery that was determined by race?
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And I don't mean to say that slavery was a non-issue in the war, only that this kind of good vs. evil/right vs. wrong slant that you can put on the war was a bit overplayed by the victors. A major reason slavery ended up being abolished was probably just that it became more expensive to own slaves than it was to hire workers and have them clothe, feed, and house themselves. It seems kind of silly to pretend that an epidemic change of heart could induce that kind of massive social change.
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Oh I agree that the North weren't completely innocent as they still treated blacks pretty poorly in the North (though not to the extreme of the South). Still a lot of Northerners were against the institution of slavery (abolitionists) for religious reasons or whatever else and even more realized that slavery just made our country look bad and behind the times.
The Civil War was years in the making. There was no "epidemic change of heart", it had existed for a long time before the war started.
Owning slaves was definitely cheaper than hiring workers, by the way. It had nothing to do with costs, otherwise the South would've most likely been on board for the Emancipation Proclamation.